I haven't had the time to run and configure Simcraft to my needs yet, so our basis for evaluation is not as solid as I'd want it to be. In particular, I'd want to test whether casting Evocation is worth it and how much benefit it brings, for Fire and Frost specs.

Let's hack together some math. Evocation provides +70%MP5 at -100% DPS, and let's assume that Evocation is worth using for Fire specs. That means gaining +70%MP5 is worth at least +100% DPS, and the task is to find how much mana the Shard of Woe will give us. According to Simcraft, the trinket will affect about half of our spells since the rest is free. IN a 3 minute fight, we cast 110 spells that cost mana, so we gain 44550 mana = 42% = +0.7%MP5, which is then worth at least 1% DPS, 1% DPS is 265 DPS = 68 INT or 120 Crit.

Now, there are 2 major flaws with the Evocation comparison: 1) It only reduces your DPS by about -55% since Comb/LB/FO damage is unaffected when timed well. 2) Estimating from the mana graphs and DPET numbers, the extra mana from Evocation is converted into around twice the damage lost due to not casting. So, the damage increase from extra mana is halved due to 1) and doubled due to 2), so there is little change overall and it will most liekely be equivalent to less than 100 INT.

TL;DR The bottom line is that the mana effect from [Shard of Woe] for Fire specs is most likely worth less than 100 INT and not competitive.
Source and thoughts: Simulationcraft Results, Cataclysm Mage Simulators and Formulators

Sorry if this has been covered some where but I did not see it after double checking.

If it is relevant for Simulators, Impact Fire Blast will do damage, crit, and proc Ignite before spread DoTs.

Has anyone done any tests/modeling of Fire AoE? Specifically, if you have LB ticking away on a mob and you proc impact, is it better to refresh LB on the mob and spread a full duration LB to three other mobs, or is it best to let LB tick down to 1 tick left, then hit impact and spread a 1 tick LB to three other mobs - thus benefiting from the explosion?

My gut feeling is the more LB explosions you can get in an AoE pull the better. I will do some testing around this if anyone hasn't.

A few PM's asking to clarify why the Soft haste Cap was 516/646 and answer this question, "If you have 5% Haste from Raid Buff + 3% from Netherwind Presence, why don't you simply need a further +4.5% Haste from gear to bring it up to 12.5% raid buffed? Shouldn't it just be 5 + 3 + 4.5 = 12.5?"

(One of the) answers from an EJ member who cleanly clarified it for me was:

Due to Haste being multiplicative, we only need ~4.022% from gear, not 4.5% (such as if it were additive).

Be mindful of rounding errors though. I just did some Dummy tests with a Shadow Priest and 2/3 Netherwind Presence while exactly at the so-called soft cap.

- When I had my gear set up to give exactly 646 Haste Rating (2/3 Netherwind Presence) which correponds to 5.045% Haste from gear and ticks of LB every 2.67 sec: I still usually only had 4 ticks of LB - and only sometimes had 5.
- After reforging one furter item, I had 690 Haste, 5.39% Haste Rating from gear and ticks every 2.66 seconds. Then I always had 5. (I would have tried 647 Haste rating, but didn't have a way to increase my rating by just 1 from 646).

If anyone has a setup with exactly 517/518 haste (With 3/3 NP) or 647/648 (With 2/3 NP) and can repeat this test, please let us know. It's easy to test this on a target dummy. Just be sure to do the test without any Haste Procs or when they are on internal CD (Eg: Hurricane from Weapon).

Edit - Have we pinned down why Rawr and Simulationcraft are disagreeing so much on Haste yet?

I want the OP to have a mini-section for "Common Questions Answered" which hopefully will catch the most common Fire questions. Inspired by how other EJ Class forum threads have done similar. After reading several other website forums, noting the responses in this thread and questions in PM's - there's only a small handful of suitable questions surprisingly - which are:

Question	Answer
Which is the most powerful stat?	Intellect. Yes, it's even stronger than Hit.
Which Armor should I use?	Molten Armor at all times
Why am I always going OOM, Help!	Strong Mana Management is a non-negotiable requirement to play a Cataclysm Fire Mage. Read the Mana Management section for more details
Why not just use Mage Armor?	Using Molten Armor is the better for several reasons. Mobile Scorch is tied to Molten Armor. Movement is required for many Cataclysm Encounters You lose 5% crit if you use Mage Armor Using Scorch is not as big a DPS loss as you may think
Is Scorch terrible DPS compared to Fireball?	No. Scorch is actually very competitive DPS compared to Fireball. It's not quite as good as Fireball for single target, but close. It's also completely free, makes use of the Crit from Molten Armor, has more chances to proc Hot Streak and Impact, and can be used while moving.
Haste VS Mastery: Which is better?	Simulationcraft and Rawr disagree on exact weightings. We do know that getting the Soft Haste cap is important. After reaching the soft Haste cap however, Haste is regarded as the weakest stat by Simulationcraft, but valued a little higher by Rawr. Watch this space for updates as they become available on this topic.
What is the "Soft Haste Cap" and why is it important?	Reaching the Soft Haste Cap means your Living Bomb, Frostfire Bolt (Glyphed) and Pyroblast (DOT) gain one additional tick. With 3/3 Netherwind Presence it's: 516 raid buffed. With 2/3 Netherwind Presence it's: 646 raid buffed. Read the "Relative Stat Values" section for more information in this topic.

I just happen to have 648 haste with 2/3 NP and I can confirm that it is enough for the 5th tick. If I find an easy way to get 647, I will test this as well and edit this post.

EDIT: Tested with 647: I got the 5th tick, so this seems to be the minimum.

Tyrian, thanks for posting the mathematical details regarding the soft haste cap. As a goblin, I get a 1% cast speed increase from the Time is Money racial. I wanted to add the details taking into account the goblin racial, so someone please check the math:

1.03 (3/3 Netherwind Presence) * 1.05 (raid buff) * 1.01 (goblin racial) * X (gear) = 1.125

X (gear) = 1.125 / 1.092315 = 1.0299226871

X % = 2.99226871

X rating = 2.99226871% * (128.05701 rating/%) = 383.18

Rounding up: 384

I haven't yet balanced to 384 exactly to test it, but hopefully the math checks out.

For 2/3 Netherwind Presence as a goblin, I believe the required rating would be: 513, rounded up.

I don't understand why there are no haste soft cap numbers for 1/3 NP, as 1/3 NP is currently part of the best talent specialization atm, unless you don't play with cauterize which is the biggest mistake possible for progress raiding.

Can you provide more reasoning for this conclusion? I assume you're referring to the Fire build used in your secondary spec on the armory. This build doesn't make sense to me, outside of something being specially tailored towards a single target fight. But even if it is, why not just have 3/3 NP - and drop some of the AOE utility talents? If you're specially tailoring towards single target, why not go the whole way.

Furthermore, there was some analysis and discussion on Arcane Concentration in the first few pages here somewhere. Maje concluded the first point was indeed a very minor DPS increase, with the second and third being of even smaller value. Overall, it was concluded that the second/third points of Arcane Concentration were essentially trivial and unnecessary - with only the first potentially being approximately equal to Netherwind Presence. However, placing all three into Netherwind Presence will result in similar/slightly greater (we're talking about very small DPS differences here) DPS - and allow you to reforge away a little more Haste (after Soft Cap) into crit on gear.

We're open to ideas and suggestions, but I don't yet see how 1/3 NP builds have a compelling justification to exist. Currently, the two specs people are using are:

'Standard' spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Situational Pure Single target spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

With the DPS difference (for single target) between these two variations being very small. The latter gives up a ton of AOE potential for this disproportionately small benefit.

2/3 NP was included because many players feel 35 yard Impact range to be the acceptable minimum, instead of 30, and pull one point from Netherwind Presence. Obviously if players wanted a full 40 yard Impact range, they could drop another point from NP and indeed have 1/3 NP. I can easily edit the OP to include Haste Cap values for 1/3 anytime, just wondering if/when people actually would use that advice for a 1/3 spec: Just to increase Impact from 35 to 40 yards?

If any theorycrafters out there have some updated analysis / results on Arcane Concentration's value, please let us know! (My points above are based on comments several weeks/months old now). Furthermore, we're still trying to pin down the value of Haste between Simulationcraft and Rawr - and work out why they disagree. The refined accuracy of Haste values will directly impact decision making between AC and NP.

Can we have some numbers of living bomb and pyro glyph? It seems pyro only beat living bomb on single target, and if can keep lb on 2 target, then LB glyph is better dps?

The simulation data on single target shows LB is 14-16% total damage and pyro is 10-12%.
It seems with 35% cri, the glyph is 1 cri in 20, that worth (2.8-1)/(2*8+12)=6.4% of pyro damage shows on simu data.
And the LB glyph worth at least (65+70*1.4)/(65+70)=3.6% of LB damage, that doesn't count that you always have LB damage copied in combustion. (if consider that, should it be (10/120+1)*3.6%=3.9% of the LB damage on the simulation?)

So the pyro glyph worth about 0.75% dps and LB worth around 0.5%?
While other 2 prime glyph both worth more than 2% dps.

Simcarft currently uses an outdated formula for the T3 Hot Streak chance so the number of Pyroblast!s it expects is higher than what it should be. That aside the Living Bomb glyph works additively with the other talents so in reality it's less than 3% of what the LB does.

The Pyroblast! glyph even if we forget the T3 HS numbers is problematic, it's listed as Pyroblast; there were a few bugs with Blizzard's implementation of different spell/abilities and their interaction with Pyroblast(!). It is extremely hard to test if the glyph actually works with the Hot Streak version of the spell (the same issue we will have with 4t11), assuming it does and tweaking the T3 HS numbers the Pyroblast glyph is slightly better than LB.

That is assuming single targe, right? And it seems in a lot of fights you can put LB on more than one target for some time. If pyro is only slightly better, then to use which is arguable, or maybe u want to switch glyphs each fight. Anyway, we still want to know the exact numbers of each glyph, so we can decide which to use.

because the extra damage from Int > damage lost by missing.

for example, as a *very* simple example to make you understand, what do you think is best:

1) a mage hitting for 9k and NOT missing
2) a mage hitting for 10k and having a 5% miss chance

do the math and you will see

I don't know if this question has been brought up about haste before, but do the spell tooltips accurately reflect how haste is lowering the cast time? For me, cast times appear to be shorter than they should be given the amount of haste I have from gear and talents.

I have 923 haste on my gear which gives approximately 7.21% haste rating. I'm also 3/3 NP. Pyromaniac is not up and I do not have a 5% haste raid buff either.

The way I calculate my cast time:
Haste: 1.0721 (gear) x 1.03 (NP) = 1.104263 or 10.4263%
Fireball: 2.5 s cast/1.104263 = 2.264 s cast
Pyroblast: 3.5 s cast/1.104263 = 3.1695 s cast
Scorch: 1.5 s cast/1.104263 = 1.358 s cast

WoW tooltip cast times
Fireball: 2.16 s cast
Pyroblast: 3.02 s cast
Scorch: 1.29 s cast

At this time I'm not worrying about ticks of LB or Pyro, just about whether the tooltips are accurately showing casting time. Also, if the tooltip is accurate than what is the real calculation for haste changing cast speed. In addition, if anyone knows of a mod that measures my casting time in game, I will try it out and parse my results.

The reason that in the past Hit has outpaced other stats was its relatively cheap conversion relative to its benefit. That is, if we assume you are at some whacky point in gear scaling where 1% hit and 1% crit are worth the same amount, it took far less hit rating to get 1% hit than 1% crit. Historically.

Now, with the advent of Int->SP conversions for everyone, a relatively high conversion for hit rating to hit percentage ( 102.44 per 1% ), and Fire mages encountering scenarios where having more mana means more Fireballs can be cast which is a slightly higher output than the free Scorches, and it becomes worth it.

There will be a point, at some point, where one point of hit is a greater DPS contributor than one point of Int, but that may not be within reasonable gear limits, and or may require you to be ridiculously off balance with your DPS stats (10k Int and zero hit, for example).



You are calculating your combined haste correctly as we would expect it to be. Mods that track your cast time will simply be telling you the same thing that your tooltip is, except to two more decimal places. This macro:

Should display that value while you are casting the spell, so add a line to it for /cast SpellNameHere, and spam it against a target dummy, that should tell you what your cast time is according to your cast bar.

First of all, thanks for the compendium - it is excellent. Here is something you may want to add:

Regarding Pyroblast vs. Pyroblast!:
It seems keybinding a /cast Pyroblast! macro instead of keybinding the Pyroblast spell is well advised. Why? Following reasons:
1) If you try to cast Pyroblast when Hotstreak procs you'll notice you have to stand still for a 1/2 a second to do it, where as with Pyroblast! you can be jumping and insta-cast it.
2) If you are OOM and casting free scorch and proc a Hotstreak you won't be able to cost Pyroblast until it hits the minimum required mana (even though it is still a free spell and doesn't take away any mana...)

I'm pretty sure it is not my addons causing this (definitely not reason 2 anyway), if it were though it would be either Bartender or Spellbinder.

I ran a lengthy test to primarily check if 2t11 actually works on Pyroblast! on the way I also collected some more information on T3 Hot Streak, T4 HS wasn't selected, MA wasn't used and Critical Mass was on the target, P! glyph wasn't used;

l85 vs l85 dummy
Character crit rate: 21.28%
Scorch: 15301 casts, 4169 crits (27.247% vs. expected of 21.28 + 5 = 26.28%)
Pyroblast!: 1363 casts, 423 crits (31.034% vs. expected of 21.28 + 5 + 5 = 31.28%)
Pyroblast! ticks: 5487 ticks, 1689 crits (30.782% vs expected of 31.28%)
Hot Streak procs: 1426 (34.20% proc chance, at the crit rate of 21.28 (CM isn't taken into account))

As a conclusion 2t11 does in fact work for Pyroblast! and we have one more data point for T3 HS function. I hope to rerun the test in a few days with 2t11 + Glyph of Pyroblast! and a much higher crit rate (circa 32% I hope).

Maje: Thanks for the data set, especially a nice, large set.
T3 HS seems to be lining up quite happily in a new formula:



My guess is that the actual formula is something like , where c = character sheet crit.

Also, this data set you've provided very implies that P(T3HS) is not affected by debuffs.

Just used this macro.

Scorch: 1294, i'm assuming ms so it would be 1.294 s
Fireball: 2156 or 2.156 s
Pyroblast: 3019 or 3.019 s

All of these values agree with the tooltips, but why don't they agree with the haste calculation?

Do you by any chance have exactly 1 pt. in Pyromaniac?
Apparently it's currently bugged and gives you a permanent casting speed increase.

See:
Different casting times - Forums - World of Warcraft

I have tried to search for this information but i could not find anywhere any relevant information.

On fights live the Twilight Ascendant Council where you fight more than one mobs but they are far away from one another so that you cannot spread dots via impact, is it worth it the gcd to try and keep up your living bomb on both targets? Maybe with swapping the pyroblast glyph with the living bomb one?

I know that this was not true during wrath but since a lot have changed since then i am curious to see if it is worth it

Heres some more T3 HS data:

Character Pane Crit Rate	Non-Crits	Crits	Procs
0.1009	7341	807	559
0.3145	5527	2515	230

Solves to a formula of Y=-2.8147831*X + 0.97670059 where Y is the proc rate and X is the crit rate. The 31% crit rate point agrees with Shaewyns Y = -2.25*X + 0.8 formula, the 10% test may not have enough crits to give a good sample.

This is a level 80 mage vs a level 80 target dummy, specced thusly: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft and as always, raw combat logs are available if anyone would like them. I'll see about doing a 20% crit test under the same conditions later this week.

Zaldinar: Thanks for the new data!

I think that your 10% point is probably more accurate than mine (larger sample size). Assuming that the T3 HS formula does not change with level, the formula should now be something more like y=-2.85x + 1. This is really interesting, as it implies that with a crit rate of 0, our T3HS chance should be 100%. Not sure if this is accurate... and testing a crit rate near zero is frustrating.